RosieBell

Punching up, punching down

Re Charlie Hebdo:-

“The point of satire is to attack the powerful, to expose their hypocrisy and absurdity, and of course to be funny. If satire is directed downwards it is not satire, it’s bullying.

So doubly wrong there Tim Sanders at the Socialist Review. (H/T Tendance Coatesy - do read his whole piece)

Two elementary objections:-

1. Mohammad and Islam are very powerful - to a gruesome degree in some places; 
2. It's not the point of satire to attack the powerful. The point of satire is to ridicule absurdities. It's not just the powerful that are absurd.

Tim Sanders belongs to some left wing groupuscule. I suppose he'd admit that left wing groupuscules are (sadly) not powerful. They had the piss gloriously taken out of them in The Life of Brian with the The People's Front of Judaea vs the Judaean People's Front.

Here's a video clip to refute his argument:-

 

1. It's funny – one of the funniest scenes in one of the funniest films
2. It attacks the powerless – who happen to be absurd in this instance. In fact their powerlessness is part of their being ridiculous.

However word seems to be getting about that satire MUST attack the powerful otherwise it isn't really satire - punching up against punching down. Will Self said something incoherent about this on Channel 4 (both he and Martin Rowson are purgative – see them fisked here.)

“You always have to ask with something that purports to be satire, who is it attacking? Are they people in a position of power? And if it’s attacking people in a position of power, is it giving comfort to people who are powerless and who are assaulted in some sense by those powerful people? This is not the dynamic with Islamist terrorists, they are not in power in our society, and it is not comforting the people who look at these cartoons whether in Charlie Hebdo or in newspapers here, they don’t feel better about themselves or about life to see Islamist terrorists mocked or the beliefs of Muslims in general mocked - why does it make anybody feel better?”

Islamists do have power within our society. In that interview the cartoonist Rowson said he wouldn't draw Mohammad in case staff at newspapers got killed, i.e. he obeys the assassins' veto.  Pissing off Islamists and their followers seems as morally imperative as pissing off David Cameron and his – except that David Cameron won't execute you out of hand.

When Rageboy was in one of his fits about a crappy film - those fits which would be funny if they weren't sinister, it made me feel better to knock this cartoon up.  Caption:- Film Critics Revolt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self teaches contemporary thought at Brunel University but his notions of satire seemed to have stopped at Spitting Image. One thing to notice about modern culture, as I thought last night when watching Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipes, which twists the tail of the ordinary glazed-eyed citizen as well as world leaders, is how it is flooded with satire, with piss-taking, with smart-arsery, with Reddit, and Cracked and Weird Al Yankovic. It's the modern idiom. Selfie, with his natural tone of sneering contempt and his ultra-punnable surname, is evidently the fish who doesn't know it's water he's swimming in as he hasn't noticed that early twenty first culture in the anglophone world is satirical to the point of misanthropy, which makes our politicians despised to an unhealthy degree, because, they, poor buggers, have to talk in the language of hope and belief, and it's as if they're speaking Victorian Uplift, while we their voters speak Modern Cynic.

However Self may have been doing a piece of satire of his own – perhaps a subtle reference to the English academic in David Lodge's Changing Places (a satire against the not very powerful) who boasts he's never read Hamlet.

Satire can be cruel, or it can be gentle. Goodness Gracious Me was rather gentle about its crass whites, its social climbers the Coopers and the bloke who says Indian about every invention (who should be resurrected as a Muslim saying, “It's in the Qu'ran” about genetics, embryology and thermodynamics.)

Jonathan Swift punched up at politicians in Lilliput and Brobdignag, and scientists in Laputa, but come the fourth voyage he was punching downwards at grovelling humankind. The Simpsons punches down at America's blue-collar class. Shameless punched down at the British underclass. The Royle Family punched down at the British working class and Rab C Nesbit punched down at the Scottish schemey.

Mo Dawah, one of the best things on Twitter, aims his darts at the target of the “community leader” - who has a helluva lot more power than their victims though less power than the Government.

We must not be afraid to address the problems within our community, by introspecting fearlessly on how it is everyone else's fault.

We have to fight the hegemony of hetero-normative racist patriarchy that tries to blame the perpetrators who are victims too #Rotherham (Now that one is savage.)

Sick of double standards of liberal fascists imposing freedom to say what I want on me, whilst denying my right to impose censorship on them

Meanwhile the Charlie Hebdo disapprovers reach for their Holocaust. What would you think if we made cartoons about Jews in gas chambers hey? Hey?

Well I'd think you were a shit of course, but I already thought that about you.

However, let's treat this seriously for a second or two and spell out the difference between making fun of a religion with its sacred objects and a staggering, culture-breaking historic event that still has living witnesses. Here are a couple of cartoons featuring women – one semi-mythical (though admirable on the whole).

The Virgin Mary/Our Lady

A rape victim

I'm sure you Holocaust cartooners can find something absurd and ridiculous about her plight and will knock up a nifty speech bubble. As for me I never want to google “rape victim” images again.

Actually if I was Charlie Hebdo I'd do a caption like “Her skirt must have been too short” which, to explain to those who are slow on the uptake, would be a satire against rape-victim-blamers. But I haven't got the heart or stomach.

My satire is constrained by my own boundaries and that of the shared culture, where we judge what is outside of enough. We can estimate satire as good or bad in all sorts of ways, but not that it only should attack the powerful. Cartoonists laying into a religion shouldn't have to think again, except for the prudential reasons that now are forcing us to mind our manners or else.

No True Feminist

Well, things aren't like when I were a girl young woman/feminist. CUSU Women’s Officer Amelia Horgan posted the following statement re an event at Cambridge Union, where Germaine Greer was invited to speak:

“The CUSU Women’s Campaign would like to express concern over the invitation of Germaine Greer …to speak at the Cambridge Union. Greer’s transphobia has been demonstrated not only in her writing, but also in her actions. In 1996 she publicly opposed the appointment of a trans woman academic to a position within Newnham college, outing her in the process. As such, Greer’s invitation to speak within our University community is all the more worrying – is institutional memory really so terrifyingly limited when it comes to bigotry?

Greer does not represent feminism [fetch me the smelling salts], and she does not represent us.”

No she doesn't represent you as she couldn't represent puffed-up sanctimonious prigs - which is something she never was however wrong-headed she can be.

I've just been reading Caitlin Moran's engaging How to be a Woman, which is funny and shrewd in the style of Julie Burchill.  Moran says in her chapter I am a Feminist:- "I've never actually encountered Greer. I've never read anything she's written, or seen her speak. I presume she is a stern, shouting thing, always pointing out the 'right' thing to do: like a nun, but angry.

Then I see her on TV...

Greer says, 'I am a feminist' in a perfectly, calm logical and entitled way. It sounds like the solution to a puzzle that's been going on for years..."

Moran then goes to read The Female Eunuch:- "..what is most notable, for someone raised on rock music, is that Greer writes about being a woman the way men sing about being men. When Bowie describes Ziggy in 'Ziggy Startdust' - 'He was the nazz/with Godgiven ass/He took it all too far/but boy cold he play guitar' - it might as well have been Greer talking about herself. She is the nazz, with God-given ass. She writes paragraphs like piano solos, and her rendering of feminism is simple: everyone should just be a bit more like her. Scornful of any useless inherited bullshit. New, fast, free. Laughing, and fucking, and unafraid to call anyone out - from a boyfriend, to the government - if they were stupid, or wrong. And LOUDLY LIKE ROCK MUSIC."

She had that effect on many and as someone said, that even if you knew you couldn't live as a wild spirit ready to take on anyone and anything, she gave a housewife courage to try for the part-time job and the part-time degree (that was back in the 1970s, when I read her, about 15 years before Moran did).

Moran says that she herself became Greer-ish enough - i.e. someone with strong, confident opinions, to take issue with Greer's thoughts on transgender - a controversy I neither know nor care about.

Can I imagine Greer forming some group "expressing concern" about someone or other invited to speak at the Cambridge Union? Or making a Mrs Grundyish show about boycotting drinks parties held on the premises (read it in the link )?   From way outside academia, I read about the student activists there as a bunch of Victorian matrons, telling the footman that they are not at home to such a person and refusing to countenance women of easy virtue. Much like those conservatives who recoiled from the young Germaine Greer for her opinions on women and sex and her habit of swearing.

Incidental nonsense, bicycling nonsense

When the Plebgate story broke, cyclists were staunch. Though it's neither big nor clever to swear at the police, a cyclist's right of way had been unreasonably impeded. 

According to the law books, there is a right for all Her Majesty’s subjects at all seasons of the year freely and at their will to pass and repass the public highway without any let and hindrance. (Read the rest for how the police have taken control of access to Downing Street).

Everyone was partisan about Plebgate. As one of Radio 4's misnamed comedians said on last night's News Quiz, it was a hard choice between the Tory toff, and the Sun and the Met.

Chris Mullin (ex Labour minister) had thought it was a fit up by the Police Federation.

Describing his own run-in with the Federation, which, he said, had sought to have him removed as chairman of the Commons' Home Affairs Select Committee when he raised questions about the probity of the police disciplinary system, he said: "The Federation is a bully.

... 

It has a long track record of intimidating ministers, journalists and anyone else who gets in its way. It also has a track record of defending the indefensible.

 One of the policemen standing at the gate agreed.

 Ian Richardson said the initial confrontation after Mitchell tried to leave Downing Street on his bicycle was a “nonsense incident” that spiralled out of control, in part propelled by the political aims of the Police Federation.

 …

 If senior officers had read his notes from the evening, Richardson said, it might have saved a lot of trouble: “I think it could have been put into perspective. It could have been said that it was a minor incident that’s been leaked to the newspapers, and let’s move on. But, of course, we didn’t move on, and we ended up at the high court last week and this week. It’s a great shame. And at what cost to so many people.”

 “Nonsense incident” meets the case.

 After a sequence of events of apology and investigation, suing and counter-suing. Andrew Mitchell ended up in the libel court, and what it hinged upon was whether he used the word “pleb” or not.

I was convinced in a comments thread that a toff however annoyed would not use “the archaic, pantomime word "pleb"...As soon as I read that I knew there was something wrong...it sounded exactly like somebody's caricature fantasy about what an angry toff would say to some innocent constable, and not at all what such a toff would be likely to say, even if intending great rudeness... “ 

However, the High Court judge presiding over the libel case stated:- 

 For the reasons given, I’m satisfied, at least on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Mitchell did speak the words attributed to him, or so close to them as to amount to the same, the politically toxic word pleb.

on the grounds that the policeman was too thick to make it up.

Weighing up the competing claims, the judge said PC Rowland was "not the sort of man who would have had the wit, imagination or inclination to invent on the spur of the moment an account of what a senior politician had said to him in temper".

Of course some will always take the chance to poke at cyclists:- 

 In another interview on Today a former Tory MP, Michael Brown, said Mitchell would not have got into trouble if he had been using a ministerial car rather than a bicycle.

“The reason that cabinet ministers and junior ministers were given ministerial cars by Harold Macmillan was so that they didn’t get into this kind of mess,” he said. “My main criticism of Andrew Mitchell is that all this Cameroon bicycling nonsense is what got him into trouble. Ministerial cars are for ministers to be protected from this kind of rubbish.”

In countries with civilised urban transport politicians do get about on bicycles.

 

Danish politicians on ceremonial visit to the Queen of Denmark

The Beeb solemnly informed us that Plebgate, WhiteVangate and Taxigate * all demonstrate “an out of touch Westminster elite.“

Or demonstrate the media grabbing at trivia to make an easy story to get the comments boxes and social media boiling. All of those incidents could have been/should have been settled with a quick apology. All can be commented on from the top of the stupidest head. At a time with two forms of destructive nationalism on the up in Britain and parties competing to out-anti-immigrant each other, we could do with less of this nonsense.

 *(Conspiracy theory – all involving transport.... must join up somewhere..)

Cycling click bait

Click bait, it's called, or carcase journalism.  That is, a stinking piece of writing that lies there to attract the barking jackals and howling hyenas. This piece of decaying flesh by Rod Liddle, one of the busiest of bait layers, attracts a better class of response than it deserves.

No quoting out of context. The full text:-

My best mate revealed to me that his bicycle was wrecked. I asked if he would be buying a new one. He said yes, via the government’s Cycle To Work scheme. What the hell’s wrong with Halfords, I thought silently to myself.

Apparently the government will let you pay for a bike tax and NI free, and in instalments. Did you know that? Why am I paying for my friend to have a new bike through my taxes? Why am I subsidising the process whereby a perfectly decent human being is transformed into an arrogant, self-righteous, lycra-clad sociopath with homicidal intent towards people like me, ie pedestrians? At the very least they should make those who take advantage of the scheme carry organ donor cards. We’d clear up kidney disease within a week.

I'm as lazy as Liddle so I'm not going to do that solemn cyclist thing he would find so amusing where we trot out statistics of health, wear and tear on roads, better use of transport infrastructure and so on that makes this policy worth the investment, or go on about the subsidised motorist. I'll just snatch at a few of the comments his piece attracted:-

Oedipus Rex answers in kind:-

For a direct answer to Rod's question, the reason for the scheme is to wind up all those fat, arrogant, whinging drivers who see their private motoring as a sort of personal Road to Golgotha where they are martyred by VED/petrol tax/pesky cyclists and so on as they drive their company cars, dripping in sweat, listening to 'Sultans of Swing' or some such rubbish and nearly killing me whilst blabbing on their mobiles.

Blingmun uses a common argument from motorists, though more overstated than normal:-

Cyclists also use roads without paying for them. Not only should they not be subsidised as described above, but if their number is to increase at current rates, they should be taxed in order to make way for motorists, who are the lifeblood of our economy and entire way of life.

Marty560 ripostes:-

Should we tax pedestrians too? They have had an entire network of pavements provided for them at my expense. Freeloaders.

Businesses that have become national or international companies, from small ones or start-ups, in the last decade due to the cycling boom:-

Rapha, Vulpine, Hope, Brompton, Boardman, Mekk, Genesis, Orange, On-one, Planet X, Ribble, Condor, Cube, Demon Frameworks.

Generating approximately £2.9bn for the economy - nearly enough to pay the NHS bills of obesity, in fact.

Phil:-

Drivers are not on the roads as a right but as a privilege. They are there through licensing. Pedestrians and cyclists are all there by right and always have been long before the institutionalization of the automobile came along.

In a nutshell, a driver can have their license taken away, but short of being put in prison or killed by a member of the anti-cyclist brigade, cyclists will always have a right to the road. For this reason alone, we have already won the battle regardless of how much noise the opposition makes.

Red Baron with another common argument that cars own the roads (from Roman times?)

The reason that this country isn't set up for mass cycling is that the infrastructure is non-existent. I am not against this infrastructure being put into place though, as long as the cyclists pay for it and stop being self-righteous by getting off our roads and our pavements and respecting the rights of the ordinary driver and pedestrian.

Don Shipp replies:-

Britain has cycling infrastructure. The old Roman roads, turnpikes, coach roads; country lanes and city streets are perfect for cyclists. None of them were ever designed to be used by anything faster than a horse so of course you motorists get frustrated with them.

And - here I'm getting annoyed enough to add my own comment - motorists do effectively own swathes of huge expensive roads called motorways, from which cyclists, horses and pedestrians are banned.

"Phil" who comments throughout makes a lot of sense. Why isn't s/he writing articles for the Spectator on cycling instead of that idle wind-up merchant, Rod Liddle?

Men, women and children were all cycling many years before the current masses of materialists all took to driving long distances to get the best paid jobs. These cyclists were using roads that lasted for decades before cars started blighting them.

Thanks to societies willingness to give into the cars, hospitals have been centralized, Tesco superstores have sprung up destroying many of the small family-run businesses in a 20 mile radius. Society is more anti-social than it has ever been before. And why? Because of the bloody motor car and the lazy people that give in to them! Yet you still label cyclists as the root of all evil just because of the idiots. These idiots proportionately exist behind the wheel of all other vehicles, but everyone chooses to ignore that.

And the inevitable Downfall parody:-

 

You can read the rest of the comments to get a taste of the usual cyclists vs motorists debate.  Producing this has taken me over an hour - about 12 times longer than Rod Liddle took to write and publish this piece in a respected journal.

 

Tom Holland: caught out and stumped

This is also posted at Harry's Place.

Tom Holland's documentary, Islam: the Untold Story caused controversy and Channel 4 cancelled a repeat screening because of "threats".

 As the Council for Ex-Muslims said:- 

The threats and concerted attempt to stigmatise the documentary and its producers by attacking its credibility and even legitimacy as a field of inquiry is nothing less than an attempt to impose a blasphemy taboo by stealth and coercion against programming that scrutinises Islam.

John Crace in the Guardian, the last publication to speak evil of Islam, commented on Tom Holland's deference to the religion:-

"Can a non-Muslim hope to understand the origins of the Muslim world?" asked historian Tom Holland. "No," was the emphatic one-word response of Dr Seyyed Hossein Nasr, professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University. .
 
For decades – centuries even – scholars have felt free to contest the accuracy of other religious texts. Not least the Bible; what's true, what's parable and what's just wishful thinking has all been up for grabs without any serious damage being done to Christian beliefs. Not so with Islam, around which non-Islamic scholars tread with extreme caution. I'm all for cultural and religious sensitivity, but the degree to which Holland tiptoed around the subject and apologised for his findings went way beyond what was required. Or would have been on offer for any other religion. It was almost as if he was looking over his shoulder, half expecting a fatwa at any minute.
 
None should be forthcoming, as towards the end of the programme Holland returned to Dr Nasr for reassurance that he hadn't caused any lasting offence. Which he more or less got, as Nasr told him that what he had discovered was "quite interesting, so long as you don't try to impose your view on the Muslim world", as that would be tantamount to "western imperialism". Holland crept out of Nasr's office more or less insisting that the last thing he wanted was for any Muslim to take him seriously, so no harm was done. The gap between western liberalism and Islamic liberalism suddenly looked frighteningly large.

I don't know if a fatwa has been delivered on Tom Holland, but he has now evidently been stamped "Handle with Care. Contents controversial".  Not controversial in an edgy, "may up the click bait/ratings" way of Russell Brand, but "may cause offence somewhere or other and we'd better be careful".
 
According to the excellent site Heresy Corner, Tom Holland was to appear on TalkSPORT and speak about cricket, one of his passions.  That sounds as harmless as you can get.  But no, at the last minute he was cancelled. without being told why. (Read the whole piece.)
 

"I think they Googled me and got into a state, worrying I might be a security risk," he speculates.   "It's utterly weird.  Beyond weird.  Comic.  I think they think they're being PC, when actually they're being the precise opposite."
 
Quite. If the station was acting pre-emptively to head off presumed Muslim anger, they must have a very low opinion of Muslims.  Nor does this kind of hypersensitivity do anything to further social harmony or good community relations.  It is in fact a form of Islamophobia: irrational fear of Islam in its most basic and literal sense.
 
As far as I can tell, there were no threats, or even complaints, in the run-up to Tom Holland's planned cricket-themed appearance on TalkSPORT.  But perhaps they feared a boycott, or imagined that Anjem Choudhary and his mates would picket their studios.  ("Behead Infidels who talk about Cricket!")  Or was the threat something more oblique -- maybe they envisaged EDL supporters phoning in to congratulate Holland, not on his celebrated Six, but on his "brave" stand against Islam."
 

So there we are.  My indifference to cricket overwhelms me and I wouldn't even be able to find the frequency for TalkSPORT but now I've heard of this incident and I'm furious. It's evidently some knucklehead in the station making a kind of ridiculous Health and Safety decision, of the sort which bans using cheese wheels at the Double Gloucester cheese rolling festival - only with more serious consequences for community relations.  Tom Holland's book The Shadow of the Sword is a vivid read, which peoples a tract of history which was bare to me.  It seems he's an accomplished cricketer and Heresy Corner says he's one of the nicest blokes on Twitter.  This kind of misplaced  sensitivity just pisses everyone off, including Muslims who don't want to constantly appear like grenades minus pins.  The only people who will be happy are the EDL, who can roll their eyes, with "see what we mean?" expressions and jihadists, who will no doubt regarde this as another tiny victory in their war for undiluted "respect". 

The Troof will Prevail

There was a piece in today's Sunday Telegraph which I don't think is on line about Charlie Veitch, a former conspiracy theorist, who was praised by David Icke and Alex Jones. 

The facts in the piece were pretty much covered by Slate in September 2011, so it's old news now.  Still, here are some quotes worth having to hand. (I use this blog as a commonplace book, with a useful search tool).

In essence, the modern conspiracy narrative is the same as the one that has existed since the 19th century: that the few (often termed the "Illuminati") control the many. This, of course, is the nucleus of the dangerous anti-Jewish myth.  When he was an insider, did he experience anti-Semitism?  "Loads. Loads.  I was once accused of being a Jew because of my olive skin and my nose.  They said, "We can't trust him". " And when they say the "Illuminati" or "Reptiles", do they actually mean Jews? "It's slightly complicated but, mostly, yes," he says.

(I realise this is Ickeism for Beginners, but I don't want to move on to an intermediate stage.)

Veitch turned back to normality after taking part in a BBC documentary, Conspiracy Road Trip, where he talked to demolitions experts, air traffic controllers  and family members of the United 93 flight. He came to the conclusion that 9/11 was the work of Islamists on a suicide mission in passenger planes.  He made a video out of his recantation.

His old conspiracy friends took Internet revenge by sticking up hate videos involving pigs and child pornography and emailing a bogus "confession" of paedophilia supposedly from him.  (Do these people reflect that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion might have been a similar kind of trick, using an earlier technology?)  Alex Jones, who had praised his "great work" now put out a film referring to Veitch's "psychopath sociopath eyes".

He describes the conspiracy community as an "evil-worshipping paranoia. As someone who's been deep in it, and seen the hatred and insanity, I think big terrorist attacks will come from conspiracy theorists" He can envisage an assassination or a bombing carried out by a conspiracy believer who has lost all contact with reality.

Conspiracy theorists, he says, are often "bullied people.  People who maybe didn't get the girls at school. . . So they see a lot of rugger bugger types and they're against anything to do with them.  They will side with the devil, as long as the devil is against the West. . There's a professional victimhood in conspiracy theorists.  There's hatred of high achievers."

Over at Liberal Conspiracy Sunny Hundal has put up a post in order to rebut a conspiracy theory about the Woolwich sectarian murder with the explanation:-

"This is a bit of a tricky blog-post to write.

No doubt I’ll be accused by some of giving prominence to these Truthers. On the other hand unless such accounts are challenged and shone a light on, they can generate their own unchallenged cult status."

I really did think Sunny knew the internet better than that. Shining a light on these loons is like painting your nails with sawdust and superglue. It wastes your time, it doesn't work and it makes a mess.

The post has of course attracted the Truthers in full voice LISTEN DELUDED SHEEPLE! THE ANSWER IS IN THE PYRAMIDS AND THE ROTHSCHILDS.  

A Vagina of One's Own by Vagina Wolf

I like this title so much I have to write a post to go with it.

Naomi Wolf's Vagina: A New Biography has been panned by Zoe Heller,  Laurie Penny, Katie Roiphe, Suzanne Moore and Neuroskeptic (a neuro-scientist who questions Wolf's science bits).  (Entertaining quote mine here.)  The book outlines Wolf's quest for the transcendental orgasm that she had mislaid somewhere. Suzanne Moore describes it as a "self-help" book.  So I've decided not to read it - it sounds very American and earnest, and as for searching for the transcendental orgasm, I have trouble enough locating my keys and spare pair of specs.  As for the power of the vagina that she extolls, mine won't even charge up my moby.  Laurie Penny groans, "Has feminism come to this?" Quite.

Putting "Vagina" in a title does make a book sound more exciting and feministy, so I am jazzing up titles of books I'm reading, or have read recently:-

The Curious Incident of the Vagina in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
In the Shadow of the Vagina by Tom Holland
Vagina's End by Ford Madox Ford
Letters to Vagina by Philip Larkin
We Need to Talk about My Vagina by Lionel Shriver
The Lonely Planet Guide to the Vagina
A Vagina for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul
The Vagina of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield
Changing My Vagina: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith
The Vagina Stain by Philip Roth
The Odd Vaginas by George Gissing

This heavy solemnity about sex - Wolf, it seems,  thinks her vagina is a "goddess" and  chaps should cover you with rose petals before you go transcendental on them - does bring out the Vagina Wood in me.

 

Update:- commenters came up with more suggestions for vajazzled titles here.

Occasionally Wrong

Carol Ann Duffy does rise to her job as Poet Laureate by turning out occasional  poems, though she doesn't always rise to the occasion.  In her poem for the Olympics she sank like a Lib Dem poll; like Tony Blair's credibility; like the brotherly love in the Coalition - insert your own political metaphor. 

Enough of the soundbite abstract nouns,
austerity, policy, legacy, of tightening metaphorical belts;
we got on our real bikes,
for we are Bradley Wiggins,
               side-burned, Mod, god;
we are Sir Chris Hoy,
Laura Trott, Victoria Pendleton, Kenny, Hindes,
Clancy, Burke, Kennaugh and Geraint Thomas,
               Olympian names.

We want more cycle lanes.

               Or we saddled our steed,
or we paddled our own canoe,
or we rowed in an eight or a four or a two;
our names, Glover and Stanning; Baillie and Stott;
Adlington, Ainslie, Wilson, Murray,
               Valegro (Dujardin's horse).

(No we aren't and we didn't.  Speak for yourself.  "We" mostly sat on the sofa.)

She has received a lot of derision for it , and nowhere more than at That Place, where some commenters complained that Betjeman would have done it better, and inquired how would Larkin have done it? 

"Lamia" produced this fine pastiche, which caught the Larkin mood (glass three quarters empty and a fly drowning in the remaining liquid).

Prize-giving MMXII

by Philip Larkin

With a stern blazered smile the judge draws near,
Headmasterly, to where I loiter, bald
Bowing my head, and blinking behind my specs.
And then a velvet fumbling, a falling into place
As something heavy slithers round my neck
To hang in awkward gaudiness. A cheer,
And then the National Anthem strikes up gold.

Gold? Or something else? Stepping down slowly
From the podium to piss, I wonder
What it was all for. ‘Run for Team GB’
They said. But where does one run from here?
The crowds will quietly drift away,
The stadiums will crumble into pieces.
The asphalt lanes will gather weed and leaf.
This cycling Kraut, that weightlifting Bolivian,
That crew of sailing Japs, each year will sink
A little further into blank oblivion.

And poised between my thumb and finger
This cold token of autumnal grief.
In a bare wintry drawer it will linger,
for a while, gathering dust, unsold,
Among dead stamps and a leaflet about wine.
An old wives' charm to ward away new failure.
Something to please the nephews and the nieces.
Something to taunt those pricks in Australia.

In the Olympic bar I stand a drink
For a Danish woman and some ass from Spain.
The hot triumphant evening turns to thunder,
And somewhere out beyond the finish line
The first small medals of rain. Strange to think
We will never be so happy again.

The theme "Lamia" has taken. that no happiness endures, is in the tradition of Pindar, the poet who wrote poems to celebrate the victories of the original Olympic athletes.  Here are the last verses of his Ode to Aristomenes of Aegina, the winner of the boys' wrestling contest.  He speaks of the humiliation of the losers as well as the joy of the winners:-

Now from on high on four young bodies
You hurled your strength with fierce intent.  For them
No happy homecoming from Pytho was decreed,
As that of yours, nor at their mother's side
Could pleasant laughter ring a joyful greeting
For their return.  But shunning hostile eyes, they creep
By quiet paths, o'erwhelmed by their ill-fortune,

But he to whom is given new glory
In the rich sweetness of his youth, flies up,
Aloft, high hope fulfilled on wings of soaring valour,
In realms that brook no dullard cares of wealth,
But man's delight flowers but for a brief moment,
And no less swiftly falls to the ground again, shattered,
By destined will that may not be gainsaid.

Creatures of a day!  What is man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being.  But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of Heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blessed are their days.

(Translated by Geoffrey S Conway)

Duffy of course is entitled to write about the Government's economic policy with the fiercest anger - but a poem about the Olympics is not the best place to start, at least not in this tone - Yay Hoy! Boo Cameron! Inserting a local political message jars with the events and sounds ridiculous.  "Lamia" as Larkin and Pindar describe an event which becomes haloed with a universal theme.  

When Larkin did write an occasional poem it was for the opening of the Humber Bridge, which became part of a broader theme of isolation and joining. If he'd been in Duffy mode he would have added something about more money should be spent on cycle paths, and damned transport policy generally.

 

The winds play on it like a harp; the song,
Sharp from the east, sun-throated from the west,
Will never to one separate shire belong,
But north and south make union manifest.

Lost centuries of local lives that rose
And flowered to fall short where they began
Seem now to reassemble and unclose,
All resurrected in this single span,

 Reaching for the world, as our lives do,
As all lives do, reaching that we may give
The best of what we are and hold as true:
Always it is by bridges that we live.

The Spews and the Scum

 

Pisses all over the culture, and then complains of the stench.

Nicked from Impossible Songs.

Shorter Spiked

I've done pieces about Spiked's modus operandi and scribendi in the past, but for those who haven't the patience to read them, here's a handy compendium of the Spiked method.

Take a subject, any subject.

Submit to Brendan O'Neill.

You will be told to write on the subject using the following six options:-

1. [Subject] reveals a contempt for the working classes.
2. [Subject] is thinly disguised misanthropy.
3. [Subject] is merely an exercise in liberal self-congratulation.
4. [Subject] encourages a culture of victimhood.
5. [Subject] shows we’re governed by alarmist scaremongers.
6. [Subject] is an attempt to censor dissent.

After that, you're away.

(Lifted from a comments thread here.)